Our featured presentation this morning is a speech by Hanan Ashwari given to the Holy Land Ecumenical Foundation at their annual convention in November of 2014. For a long time we have wanted to have Hanan Aswari on This week in Palestine, and this morning we do.
Hanan Aswari is a Palestinian legislator, activist, and scholar. Ashrawi was an important leader during the First Intifada, served as the official spokesperson for the Palestinian Delegation to the Middle East peace process, and has been elected numerous times to the Palestinian Legislative Council. She is the first woman elected to the Palestinian National Council.
Before that, our host presents several current events reports (see Notes below).
The unwillingness of the United States to push back against the illegal and outrageous plundering of Palestinian land and property by Israel simply encourages the continuation of such activity. And the unwillingness of the western media to accurately report these violations of international law exposes their complicity in this blatant property theft (there simply is no other word for it). We see it constantly, but the following story this past week reported by the Middle East Monitor takes the cake. The Monitor reports (quoting):
Some 790 Palestinian firms based in occupied Jerusalem are being transferred to Jewish ownership, Jordanian newspaper Al-Ghad has reported. Director of the Maps and Survey Department in the Orient House in Jerusalem, Khalil Al-Tafakji, said: "These properties are owned by Arab Palestinian families, including 595 residential apartments, and 186 shops. The Israeli occupation confiscated these firms in 1968, turned them into state property, and now it is turning them into the private ownership by Jewish settlers." Al-Tafakji stressed: "The recent Israeli announcement to build new settlement units in occupied Jerusalem was a step towards turning Palestinian properties over to Jewish settlers." He noted that the Israeli occupation does not hide its occupation and settlement plans.
The Israeli president and prime minister reiterated that Jerusalem, east and west, is a united city for the Jewish nation and it would remain the "eternal united capital" for them.
According to Al-Tafakji, the recent ongoing Israeli measures regarding the so-called "Absentee Property Law" is the Israeli tool used to target Palestinian properties owned by Palestinians living outside Jerusalem. "Using this law, the occupation is targeting the remaining 13 per cent of occupied Jerusalem controlled by Palestinians," he said. Unquote.
In the United States we adore private property. The privatization of all things public is well underway here, including the privatization of water. In Israel there is a new wrinkle. Here is the drill: Take over Palestinian property using the Absentee Property Law (never mind that the Palestinians are not absentâ¦they are just, well, declared absent,) and then the Israeli state takes over the property and then turns around and sells the property to Jewish settlers. Grand theft in anyoneâs book, and our government cheers it on. Unbelievableâ¦except it's happening.
Other stories out of Palestine this week:
Israeli troops invaded on Monday at dawn the village of Al Qoum near the southern West Bank city of Hebron and ordered villagers to remove the power grid there. According to villagers, the soldiers gave them military orders to remove the 800 meters long power lines supplying the village homes with electricity.
The Israeli army claims that the lines are in area C and was installed too close to the separation wall that was built by Israel on lands confiscated from the villagers.
And from the North, Palestinian medical sources have reported that ten residents, including children, have been injured when Israeli soldiers invaded, on Tuesday at dawn, in Jabaâ, a town, south of the northern West Bank city of Jenin. A number of military vehicles invaded the town, broke into and searched a few homes, and interrogated several families. Soldiers also searched old caves in the town, and around it.
The invasion led to clashes with local youths, who hurled stones on the invading vehicles, while the soldiers fired several rounds of live ammunition, gas bombs and concussion grenades.
At least ten Palestinians, including children, suffered the effects of tear gas inhalation, and received treatment by local medics.
On Monday at night, the Palestinian District Coordination Office managed to secure the release of a 14-year-old Palestinian child, a few hours after Israeli soldiers kidnapped him.
The office contacted the Israeli District Coordination Office directly after the family informed it of the abduction, and conducted extensive efforts that eventually led to his release.
***
On Tuesday May 26, Less than two weeks after Omar al-Shalabi's nine-month prison sentence over posts on Facebook, Israeli authorities have revoked his wife's residency status in East Jerusalem.
Muna Abdullah al-Shalabi has been living in East Jerusalem since she and her husband's marriage 23 years ago.
al-Shalabi has recently had her residency status in Jerusalem revoked after her husband's nine-month sentence to an Israeli prison. The Israeli Ministry of the Interior refused her residency by citing unspecified "security" reasons. She has been ordered to leave Jerusalem.
Israeli authorities say that al-Shalabi had the chance to defend herself and her application in February but never came forward, so the application was refused. al-Shalabi denied that she had ever been given the chance to defend the application.
Muna and Omar al-Shalabi have six children together.
Hundreds of East Jerusalem Palestinian's have their residency revoked by Israeli authorities every year. Regardless of the situation, no Palestinian's status in the city is ever guaranteed. It is through these kinds of methods that Israel continues its ethnic cleansing in attempts to drive Palestinians out Jerusalem so that it can take over the entire city.
Stories like these are reported every week by Palestinian news sources. These daily atrocities are the fiber of existence in most Palestinian communities. They are never reported in the western media, which is why occasionally we have to remind our listeners what life is like under occupation.
And finally: we know the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement is sticking in the craw of Israel when it pressures the US Congress to outlaw the movement. That is precisely what is happening at both the federal and state level as we speak. (reads article)
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